


nature, versus

by amaranthinecanicular



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Michael Being Michael, a meditation on the self destructive nature of a spiral, that is to say a chaotic bastard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-28
Updated: 2019-12-28
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:27:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21975073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amaranthinecanicular/pseuds/amaranthinecanicular
Summary: Sometimes Michael thinks about something it once and never was; sometimes Michael thinks about Michael Shelley. Nature is a curious thing.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 52





	nature, versus

**Author's Note:**

> My gift for ashitakaz on tumblr, for the TMA Secret Snickerdoodle event. Enjoy!

Sometimes Michael thinks about something it once and never was; sometimes Michael thinks about Michael Shelley. Perhaps too much.

Michael Shelley was an identity—feeble, small. More dangerous dead than alive, in the way that musing too long on identity can be dangerous. It doesn’t like to think about him, but sometimes it does anyway. It isn’t the type to question why. Nature is a curious thing.

When the thoughts start to border on too muchness, Michael distracts itself.

“Would you like to hear a joke, Archivist?”

The Archivist startles so violently he upsets the carefully balanced ecosystem of his desk, spilling statements and files and recorders and a mug of dark liquid. He swears, and then he sees Michael, and then he swears again.

“Michael.” In his face there is a careful balance of irritation and fear. “Do I have a choice?”

“You always have a choice, Archivist. Watching you make the wrong one wouldn’t be half as fun otherwise.”

The irritation is winning out. He starts to snatch up his fallen papers. “Then no, I’d rather not.”

“As you like,” says Michael, rather reasonably, it thinks. It backs halfway through its door. “Perhaps I’ll ask your assistants, shall I? They’re always up for a laugh.”

_“Don’t.”_

There’s reverb behind the word. Weak, but Michael feels it vibrate down to the tips of each finger in dreadful straight lines. It lifts a hand and clacks the nails against its teeth, bared in a smile. The buzzing lines curl up once more. “Perhaps you should ask nicely, Archivist.”

The Archivist barely manages not to shudder. And now the fear is winning out. He opens his mouth, quite possibly to snap something against his better interest, but a shadow passes the frosted window of his door. His brow knots with concern—uncommon for an Archivist—and then he sags, a little. Dumps his armload of stained statements on the desk and faces Michael fully.

“If I indulge you, you’ll leave my staff out of it?”

Michael gives an answer that could be construed as affirmative. The Archivist looks unconvinced. Michael smiles at him, and the Archivist looks less convinced.

“Would I lie to you?” Michael asks, and snickers; that could be a joke in itself. The Archivist only scowls, and Michael raps too many knuckles along its doorframe in a rolling rhythm. “Knock knock.”

Through gritted teeth: “Who’s there?”

“Interrupting Archivist.”

The scowl tightens. These are not his sort of jokes, Michael thinks, which makes them that much funnier.

“Not going to play?” It endeavors to pout. Not an expression that comes naturally, and by the poorly hidden disgust in the Archivist’s face, that much is evident. Killing him here and now could be a joke too, but that would make for only a brief distraction.

“Pity. I do believe your assistant would have played with me. What was her name—”

_“Shut up.”_

The flush of grief and fear and hatred breathes life into the words. The Archivist has not yet come into his power, but that snarl is enough to compel Michael into smug silence, as he watches the joke and the punchline catch up across the Archivist’s face.

“Get out of here, Michael,” he says, too weary and too grief stricken to compel him a second time. Michael bows out, graciously, and leaves its laughter behind for the Archivist’s company.

:

Sometimes Michael thinks about the Institute. This terrible place of power, this stronghold of the Eye. Unforgiving, unchanging halls. Rigid walls and doorways. Michael thinks to improve it.

It lied about the assistants, of course. It is made of deceit. The Archivist should have known, really. One of them is attempting to bring him tea. Attempting is the key word; though the Archivist has yet to be fooled into opening a door, his assistants are not so lucky, nor so well protected. The young man opens the door he thinks will lead him to the Archivist’s office, steps through an inconceivable hallway, and finds himself in the library.

To say the least, the assistant is perturbed. He maintains admirable calm as he makes his slow and careful way back to the archives. He takes care to only use doors he recognizes, and only when someone else has opened it first. Eventually he finds himself back in front of a door that might be the Archivist’s. It stands where the Archivist’s door should stand. It has a frosted window and stenciled title. He scrutinizes and examines, lifts a hand to knock, hesitates. Jumps when the Archivist’s voice carries through, giving him permission to enter if he’s quite finished with his inspection. He hurries to turn the handle, and steps out of the Institute entirely, tripping onto the sidewalk.

“Well. Fuck,” says the assistant, and then he sits down on the Institute’s stone steps and has a very quiet panic attack. Michael delights from its doorway.

After some time the assistant bucks up and returns to the archives a third time, where he trembles in front of a door that could, hypothetically, open onto the Archivist’s office. It is made of warm yellow wood and bright brass. There is no frosted window. The assistant is still clutching the cup of tea, and he does not reach for the handle.

All at once, he spins on his heel and sees Michael there.

“You,” he says, looking ill.

“Yes,” decides Michael. You is mutable enough to not be an identity. “And you, Archivist’s Assistant.”

They stand and they stare at each other. The assistant squares his shoulders, lifts his trembling chin. Brave little thing. “Are you—are you doing this to Jon, as well?”

“Not quite this,” says Michael.

“And Tim?”

“Not today.” The assistant Marked by the Unknowing is diverting in a different way: he is wary of every door he comes across, and if he suspects the Spiral’s influence, he’ll simply sit in place and use the time as an excuse to further shirk his duties.

(“You’re just another monster,” he’d said once, bitterly, to the room at large. He tapped at his phone with vicious intent and didn’t lift his eyes when Michael stood before him, distorted. “You’ll kill me or something else in this fucking death trap will. Get it over with or leave.”)

Michael says, “Right now it’s just you and me, Assistant.”

“I have a name.”

“Would you like me to say it?” It can already taste the letters twisting in its mouth, the sounds molding together. The assistant shivers.

 _“No,”_ he says, and then with forced politeness, “No, thank you.”

More staring. A small noise squeezes from the assistant’s throat, a little helpless and a little frustrated and very frightened.

“What do you _want?”_

As though the answer were so straightforward. As though anything about Michael ever could be. It thinks in fractals and helixes, and in that moment it thinks to murder this poor little assistant. To invite him inside and devour him slowly, or to slice him to ribbons and tie him into a bow, leave him as a present in the Archivist’s office. He could be replaced. He is only an assistant. They mean so little; it would be so easy. Gertrude Robinson proved that.

“I would like,” Michael says, “to tell you a joke.”

The assistant blinks. “A joke? That’s all?”

“Something like.”

Which isn’t much of an answer, but the assistant seems to understand that it’s the best he’ll get. “And if I do this, you’ll leave Jon and Tim alone?”

Michael chuckles. “Made for each other, you two.”

The assistant looks as though he wants to ask after that, and then changes his mind. He swallows hard. “Alright. Let’s, uh. Let’s hear it.”

“What do you call it when worms take over the world?”

The assistant pales rapidly.

“Global _worming._ What did the woodworm say to the compost pile?”

“I don’t—I don’t think—”

“It was nice _gnawing_ you.” Michael skates one finger along the inside of the assistant’s arm, from the crook of the elbow to the rabbiting pulse. His face is turning green. “Why did the worm wake up early? It had a death wish. What did one worm say to the other when it got lost in the corpse? Good luck worming your way out of that one. How can you tell which end of a worm is which? Tickle it in the middle and see which end _laughs.”_

Michael laughs to demonstrate, and the assistant yanks himself out of reach. He lurches for the nearest wastebasket and fumbles the mug of tea on the way. The ceramic crash is dissonant and lovely against Michael’s unfurling glee.

The Archivist throws open his office door—it is _his_ door, now—just as Michael falls back through its own, tickled with distraction. It does not think about the fact that Michael Shelley liked to tell jokes.

:

Sometimes Michael thinks about Gertrude Robinson, and sometimes Michael feels.

Michael feels.

Michael feels—

It does not know what it feels. Feelings are such personal, repulsive things. Individual. Dependent on identity. The best Michael can estimate is a nauseous sort of joy, the kind that comes from spinning too long and too fast, whenever it thinks about Gertrude being dead and dead and never not being dead again. 

“Ah,” says the Archivist, a sound of flat surprise. He’s holding a sad, wilty bouquet of chrysanthemums, and he’s wrapped tight in a brown pea coat. The wind bites much too fierce for that flimsy thing. Not that Michael is wearing much better, but Michael is not a thing that gets much bothered by cold. Unlike the Archivist, who is little more than rattling bones from sleeplessness and paranoia and the desperate need to know. 

“Why Archivist, you shouldn’t have,” drawls Michael.

“They aren’t for you,” the Archivist snaps. How delightful he is. No self preservation to speak of, yet such fear. He clutches the bouquet close. Glowers. Shuffles his feet.

Michael steps to the side. It sweeps one long, long hand at the humble block of stone behind it. “Go on, Archivist. I won’t bite.” And because the Archivist’s fear is so delicious, it flexes its fingers and adds, “Why would I when I have these?”

By all accounts the Archivist appears as though he’d like nothing better than to turn and run back to his precious Institute, but he straightens his spine. Perhaps for the sake of spite alone he bulls forward, brandishing the bouquet like a weapon. Just before he throws it down, he does a double take.

“Are those—lilies?”

“And much nicer than yours,” Michael points out, but the Archivist doesn’t seem to hear. He ogles the neatly bound flowers already resting atop the grave, and then he ogles Michael, and then the lilies again. 

“Who else was here?”

“No one but you and I, Archivist. Gertrude wasn’t in the business of making friends, was she?”

“So you,” the Archivist says, and doesn’t finish. Wise of him. Michael titters softly. It doubts it's a particularly friendly sound.

“How did you know Gertrude?” the Archivist says instead. He can’t seem to help himself. The words are dragged from his throat, reeled by an inhuman need to know. He’s stronger than he was the last time they spoke—Michael almost can’t resist the urge to speak. As it is, it holds one sharp finger to its lips with a smile. 

“A story for another day, Archivist.”

Someday soon, it thinks. The Unknown is ready to make its move. For several minutes, they stand in a silence that might have been companionable if either of them were human. At one point a well dressed man walks briskly by with a bouquet of his own, and enters a family burial vault. From above, a crow caws throatily. Michael enjoys the great wheeling patterns it carves in the sky.

“She hated chrysanthemums,” Michael muses, still watching the bird. It can feel the Archivist’s gaze on him. The Eye. “She hated most flowers. Though she hated lilies most.”

The Archivist fidgets. “Regardless of how you knew her. This was—kind of you.” He says it less like he wants to and more like he’s fishing for information. Michael hums thoughtfully. 

“Is it? I didn’t do it for kindness.”

“Why do you do it then?”

“Why does any creature do anything? I am only following my instincts.”

The Archivist narrows his eyes. “And your instinct is to bring flowers to the grave of the previous archivist on the presumed date of her death.”

“That,” agrees Michael, “and this.”

The Archivist waits for elaboration, and Michael smiles at him. The Archivist keeps waiting, and Michael’s smile starts to curl at the corners. The Archivist looks quickly away. A door set into a large headstone catches his eye, and he turns, and he Sees.

The matte black door that leads to the vault. The nondescript gray door pressed into the base of the large angel statue. The marble door that replaces one square headstone altogether. The cemetery is made of doors, and each of them lead to different and more terrible graves. The man who entered the family crypt has not re-emerged. He never will.

“Run along, little Archivist,” Michael murmurs. “There’s nothing you can do for these mourners but join them.”

Abject horror suits this Archivist in a way it could never have suited Gertrude. After he has fled, stupefied by shame and terror and curiosity, Michael leans down. Rearranges the flowers into a pattern that pleases it. Dusts off the headstone until it gleams.

“You would’ve hated this,” Michael says, and it is filled with savage, nauseating joy.

:

Inside of Michael, inside its many lovely doors and hallways, there is a woman named Helen Richardson. Michael does not think about her very often. Perhaps it thinks about her much less often than it should. She is stumbling and starving and afraid, so very afraid, a decadent meal that Michael consumes and digests at its leisure. Perhaps the digesting is taking a fair bit longer than usual, but Michael always did like to play with its food. Why take a shortcut when you could instead take the long way ‘round, whorling and spiraling without end? Why end the fun so soon?

There are things that Michael thinks about. There are things that it is, and isn’t, and was, and never, and shouldn’t, and could, and can’t. Distortions and paradoxes, lies and impossible truths. There is Michael Shelley and the Institute and Gertrude Robinson. Michael distracts itself because otherwise those thoughts would pin it down, iron it out, burn a path straight and terrible through the fractals. But isn’t that the thing about a spiral: go around long enough and you’ll pass by the beginning. Even when its thoughts wander from them, they always wend their way back. Nature is a curious thing.

And there is Helen Richardson, unthought of. Winding, twisting, spiraling slowly, ever deeper.

:


End file.
